Tips for starting a podcast in 2025
If I were to start a podcast in 2025, here's exactly what I'd do, drawing from my decade of experience as the head honcho of Bamby Media. We've launched nearly 500 shows, so I've learned a thing or two about what works in this ever-evolving industry. Whether you're a seasoned content creator or just dipping your toes into the podcasting world, these tips will help you make your mark.
Invest in a Decent Microphone
First and foremost, invest in a decent microphone. This is non-negotiable. While audiences might forgive a bit of pixelated video, they won't accept poor-quality audio. Aim to spend around $300 on a good microphone and possibly a boom arm, depending on your recording setup. I recommend the Rode PodMic and the Rode PSA1+ boom arm. It’s a smart investment that pays off in listenability.
I have a number of podcast microphone reviews and battles over on my YouTube channel if you’d like to take a listen to some options yourself and see what suits your budget.
Brainstorm and Plan 50 Episode Topics
Next, come up with at least 50 episode topics. It might sound daunting, but this exercise ensures you have enough material to keep your podcast interesting for an entire year with weekly releases. Write them down, choose your favourite ten, and start recording those first. Planning ahead is the key to consistency.
Consider Audio vs. Video Content
Decide whether you'll offer audio-only content or incorporate video. With video becoming a significant component in the podcasting industry, having some form of video presence—even short snippets—can be beneficial. Whether you dive fully into video or start with audio and add video later, it's crucial to consider this aspect early on.
Strategise Your Promotion Channels
Think about how you'll spread the word about your podcast. Are you active on social media? If not, you'll need to repurpose content creatively to reach a broader audience—consider LinkedIn articles, Medium posts, podcast swaps, email newsletters or collaborations with other podcasters. Having a clear promotion strategy from the start is vital to gaining traction.
Schedule Regular Recording Sessions
Set aside specific days each month dedicated to podcasting. Batching your recordings helps maintain momentum and ensures regular releases. Pick dates well in advance to keep your podcast on schedule and this will help you stay consistent with your releases. Podcast listeners love the regularity of their favourite shows. If you can show your listener that you can be consistent, they are more likely to keep coming back to your content (and telling their friends to listen in).
Don't Skimp on Podcast Cover Artwork
Your podcast cover artwork is crucial in attracting listeners. It should be high-quality and branded appropriately—ditch the clichéd microphone or headphone imagery. Invest time and resources in creating artwork that truly represents your podcast. Like it or not, podcast listeners absolutely judge a podcast by its cover, so it’s important to make an effort here.
Get Help with Your Launch
Launching can be overwhelming, so I suggest you get professional help. Whether it's using a podcast launch package from a company like ours or watching a heap of YouTube videos to learn how to do it yourself, having guidance will smooth your start. Plus, having someone to hold you accountable can push you past those inevitable nerves and self-doubt.
Define Your Unique Message
Ask yourself: how does your podcast stand out? With countless podcasts out there, it's crucial to identify what makes yours unique. Write down what sets you apart—your mission statement, if you will—and keep your target audience at the forefront in every episode.
Prepare an Offering from Day One
Don't wait to offer something of value to your audience—be it consultations, courses, or just some merch. Even something free can greatly enhance your listener engagement and can be integrated into your show from the very beginning.
Consider Outsourcing Editing
If editing isn't your passion, consider outsourcing it. Freeing up your time enables you to focus on content creation, though budget constraints might mean taking this step later. If you handle editing yourself, software like Descript is user-friendly and a great tool for beginners.
Choose Quality Podcast Hosting
Pick a robust podcast hosting platform like Captivate. We've tried many, and its versatility, customisation options, and all-in-one features make it a favourite. From embedding links to booking guests, a quality host can streamline your podcasting process.
Release Without Checking Stats Obsessively
Finally, once your podcast is live, resist the urge to check your stats for the first few months. Focus on crafting quality content that will have listeners coming back. Success hinges on the value of your episodes, not early download numbers.
Starting a podcast in 2025 is not just an exciting idea; it's an opportunity to carve out your niche in a burgeoning industry. By implementing these tips, you're setting the foundation for a podcast that will connect you with a whole new audience and community. You've got the tools; now go out there and make some audio magic!
Happy podcasting!
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Brianna: If I was starting a podcast in 2025, this is what I would do. Now for context, my name is Brianna, I'm the head honcho of Bambi Media. We are a podcast and video production company. I've been doing this now a decade. Probably launched, I don't know, maybe five, close to 500 shows, like a lot of shows. And I have noticed What works over this period, over this decade worth of experience, I have some things that I feel you should be doing.
[00:00:30] If you're going to launch a show in 2025, first thing I would make sure I do is I would buy a decent microphone. This is a non negotiable. You need a good microphone. Statistics show that people will accept bad video, like the video that's a bit pixelated and low quality, but they will not accept. Bad quality audio.
[00:00:59] Okay, so just buy a microphone, buy a microphone and preferably a boom arm too depending on how you're going to be recording. That's a maximum spend of like three hundred dollars. We have plenty of episodes and videos that show you kind of the different types of microphones that you can choose from. I like to recommend the Rode PodMic at time of recording.
[00:01:18] The most kind of like broad spectrum sort of mic that most people will be able to use and suits the biggest number of actual recording spaces. And then the Rode PSAA1 Plus is the boom arm that I recommend as well at this point. So buy a good microphone, don't skimp, buy a good one. Non negotiable, do that.
[00:01:41] Now I want you to take a look at trying to get 50 topic ideas, 50 episodes. You don't have to record all of those. The whole point of that exercise is to make sure that you understand that you have enough, that your podcast has enough sort of topics to make it interesting, that it could go for a whole year if you were [00:02:00] releasing one a week.
[00:02:01] 50 topics, write them down, put them on a spreadsheet, however you want to do it. Pick kind of your favorite 10 or something and decide these are the ones that I'm going to record first. While you're making decisions, you have to also think about am I going to do audio only or am I going to do audio and video?
[00:02:20] Now you can work your way up to video if it's something that you feel like you want to do, but maybe you're not quite ready to do it. Or are you like, look, I'm just going to go with audio to begin with. Knowing that video is becoming such a massive part of the, of the podcasting industry, that it's something that should be on your radar in some capacity, even whether it's just snippets.
[00:02:40] So maybe you're not producing the video for YouTube whatever, but you're just getting little snippets made like we do for some of our clients on packages like that. Some form of video. is going to be good for you. I promise I've seen it hundreds of times. Some form of video will benefit you, whether that's snippets or whether that's full form, you have to decide what you're sort of going to do there and what you're going to lean into.
[00:03:09] Next up, how are you going to spread the word? So, are you active on any social media channels currently? How are you going to get word out about the show? If you're not active anywhere, then it's something that is going to be harder for you to promote because you don't have leverage anywhere else. It doesn't mean it can't happen, but it does mean You need to repurpose your content in more ways so that you can spread it further.
[00:03:32] Like having LinkedIn articles, writing for medium, doing podcast swaps and having kind of decent enough guests on that. Maybe you can collaborate a little bit, but I need you to think about before you get going, how am I actually going to get this message out? Because if it's just relying on people searching the words that you talk about, It's not going to go very far very quickly.
[00:03:53] It will take a lot longer, doesn't mean it won't. Like, word of mouth is one of the biggest parts of the podcasting industry. But just [00:04:00] know, it's good to think about before you get going. Next up, I want you to look at your calendar and I want you to block out a day every month that you devote to podcast recording.
[00:04:13] That's so that you can batch your content and you will see the rewards of doing that. It's just such a good way to actually keep the momentum going. So it means that I want you to actually look at your calendar and go, I'm going to do it on this date in July, this date in, you know, August, this date in etc, etc.
[00:04:32] Block out a date, nothing else is happening on that day, and you're recording podcast content. If you can batch, if you can get yourself sorted, then you will be a consistency king slash queen. So do that. Next up, I don't want you to skimp on your podcast cover artwork, your artwork design, the thing that people see when they search for you and the artwork comes up.
[00:04:56] Look, this is a really good way to turn people off or turn people on for your show. If your podcast artwork has a picture of a microphone in it, Delete that. If it has a pair of headphones, delete that. It doesn't need that stuff. It needs to be branded well, high quality podcast cover artwork that makes sense for the show that you're doing.
[00:05:20] People judge podcasts by their cover artwork, just the way people judge books by their covers. Don't skimp on it. It's definitely something that is worth investing in. Next up, I would love for you to at least get help with the launch of your podcast. Full disclaimer, We have podcast launch packages that you can do.
[00:05:42] It's a one off thing. It helps you like distribute your show. We do your intro, outro. We find theme music. We put it all together. We do your trailer. We write your episode description. We get you up on the podcast hosting. We shoot you a tutorial on how to use that hosting. Something like that just takes [00:06:00] that whole guess work out of that whole first bit, you know, there's actually courses that are launched just to help you launch your show You could spend money and find out how to launch your show or you could just get someone else to do it Really easily for you.
[00:06:13] That's a really good investment and you then have someone holding you accountable to go Hey, have you got this thing for me yet? When are we launching this show? Come on. Hurry up do the things. You will be scared. You will probably be scared. You will probably be nervous. You will probably be second guessing yourself.
[00:06:30] If you have someone and it doesn't have to be us, whoever it is. Someone that's in your corner, that's like, yeah, you're doing a good job. You don't sound terrible. We're going to clean you up. It's going to be great. Stop, you know, getting in self doubt mode, having someone else launch your show, having a company, someone help you with that bit will make it a really smooth transition for you.
[00:06:52] Now, I have a article, video, podcast episode that goes into, like, I have a whiteboard where I go, okay, guys, launch plan is this, do this, then this, then this, follow something like that so that you can get the most out of your launch and you don't have to do everything that it says, but having an understanding of how you would launch your show is going to be important.
[00:07:14] I also want you to think about how is your message, how is your podcast, how are your episodes different to other people's? There are so many podcasts, okay? So many flippin podcasts at this point. How is yours worth it to my ears? You gotta sell me on it. What makes it good? Look at a few things in your industry, maybe in your category.
[00:07:35] What are they doing? Why do you find those ones boring? Why do you think yours is going to be better? Write those things down. It's kind of like your mission statement that will be integral to creating a successful show. On that as well, decide who the podcast is actually for. This seems like a bit of a no brainer, I suppose, but who, who are you doing this for?
[00:07:55] For you? No, it's probably not. It's, I mean, it's indirectly for you. Like [00:08:00] you're wanting to help grow your services, build your thought leadership, sell some courses or some products or whatever. It's, it's indirectly in service of you. It's part of your marketing plan for some other purpose, I would say, but who is it actually for?
[00:08:13] What's the target audience? And when you've built that person up, you've got that kind of avatar or those few different avatars that you're catering to, make sure that when you're structuring your episodes, you're talking to that person. This one is something that people forget to do, or they don't think about.
[00:08:30] Have an offering almost at day one. So when you first launch a show, I mean, I see this all the time where they'll go, yeah, we're going to launch the podcast. And then later on, we'll have something to offer, whether that's a freebie or some merch, a course, some product, but when they launch, they have nothing.
[00:08:50] They don't have anything. And that could even just be consults, coaching services, doesn't matter. What have you got? What have you got that almost from day one, you could talk about in your show? And I'm referring mostly to B2B. If you've got merch, that's really cool. If it's a more entertainment based podcast, you can sell merch straight away, but you probably wouldn't do that without a community kind of built up.
[00:09:12] But for a more B2B person. What, what are you trying to sell? Make sure you have something and it can be completely free and I would suggest it's free and I would suggest you're not talking about it in like your first five episodes or something like that. But the point of the podcast is to generate some sort of income for you, yeah?
[00:09:30] Most people want to generate some form of income from the podcast, whether indirectly or directly. So what have you got that you are going to be offering at some point? Next up, outsource your editing. I'm biased. I fully admit I am biased, okay, because I run a podcast production company. We have audio editors.
[00:09:51] We produce shows every week. What I see is, is that when you outsource the editing, especially if it's not something that you're interested in [00:10:00] learning, It just frees you up to just be creative, to just produce quality content and not go, Oh, okay, cool. I've recorded this thing now. That was awesome. Now I have to spend six hours editing it.
[00:10:12] And then it just dampens your spirits and it makes you sad. And then you stop releasing as frequently because the editing is taking too long and it's not as good as you want it to be. And, and I know there are budget constraints that you can't always outsource your editing. It might be something that you look to do, okay, in the future.
[00:10:31] I'm saying outsource your editing because I've seen the shows that we work on, they keep releasing because someone else is doing the editing. They've taken that out. That off their hands, off their plate to allow them to do the other things in their business that actually make them money. An important one for you to think about.
[00:10:48] And if you can't outsource due to budget or whatever else reason, Descript is probably the easiest software to learn. And I have a free course that you can do to learn Descript. That does need updating though. I'll get to that at some point, but it is free at this moment. It may not always be free. Okay.
[00:11:04] So do the free one if you want to. Then I want you to pick a quality podcast hosting platform. I'm going to suggest Captivate. We've used Buzzsprout, OmniStudio, Transistor, Simplecast, Podbean, Anchor when it was Anchor, you know, all these different platforms. Captivate wins. Because it has the most versatility, the customization, you can embed different attribution links, you can get your guest bookings all through there.
[00:11:32] It's this all in one hosting platform that I really enjoy. So I'll put a link to the Captivate platform in there. We are affiliated with them, but that's only because they're awesome. So that would be my suggestion there. Pick a quality podcast host. Once you've done all that, actually release the podcast.
[00:11:52] Oh my god! Actually release it! That should be the easiest thing you do. You hit launch as in you [00:12:00] schedule in a release date and you actually release the show. And then while you're there, while you're releasing, don't check your stats. Don't check them! I'm going to say it again. Don't check your stats for like at least three months because it's not important.
[00:12:14] It's not really important. What is important is quality content with hundreds of thousands of active shows, active podcasts. It's so easy for your show to suck. Okay. It's so easy for your show to just get squashed down amongst all the other garbage that is out there in the podcasting realm. Don't make yours suck.
[00:12:35] Make it good. So don't check your stats. Focus on your content. Is your content good? Are your episodes quality? Will people want to come back? These are the important things in the podcasting space, because they can get this knowledge anywhere. How is yours different? Is it quality content? Don't check your stats.
[00:12:53] As soon as you're checking your stats, you're thinking, uh, okay, I've got to do more of these, or this is, why am I not getting enough? Now I'm going to have to change the way I'm doing things because I'm not getting enough downloads. No, no, no, none of that is really important to begin with. Your content needs to be good.
[00:13:10] If your content is good, people will talk about you, you'll have word of mouth, you'll start to spread properly. If you've got some sort of plan around how you're repurposing, you've got some good video sort of snippets at least. All of these things will be so much easier. So much better if you have quality content and you're not thinking about your downloads.
[00:13:34] So don't check them for a while. And then after a while, you can start to check them. They are my key things. That is what I would say to someone who's wondering how to launch a podcast in 2025.
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